[Bug-XBoard] Re: [bug #26126] Enhancement: XBoard support for MiniChess 2007

[Bart Massey]

Thanks for the note!

I'm pretty happy with the patches I have at this point,
except that they probably don't work with winboard, as
you've noted.  Perhaps I can get one of my Windows-using
students to fix that...

I'd probably be willing to revise my patches to get 4.3.15
to referee proper MiniChess (including adding the new 2009
bishop move, making double pawn moves illegal, promotion
always to queen, win by king capture), but I'm not getting
where I would submit these patches or how they would be
provided and maintained.  Is there a VCS repository and
issue tracker somewhere public that has the 4.3 development
in it?

Thanks much for any guidance you might have.

    Bart Massey
    address@hidden


In message <address@hidden> you wrote:
> Note that most of the changes this patch requires involve 'divorcing' the 
> board width and board height
> from each other, and making them variables rather than constants. All this 
> is already standard in
> XBoard 4.3.15.
> 
> MiniChess 2007/2009 are not amongst the variants officially supported in 
> XBoard 4.3.15, although
> they can be played by using the command-line options to overrule the board 
> format -boardWidth
> and -boardHeigt, and supplying a FEN for the opening position with 
> -loadPositionFile. Any protocol v2
> engine  playing this variant would have to acknowledge it knows it by 
> including 5x6_normal in its
> feature variants="..." command.
> 
> To play the 2009 variant would require legality checking to be turned off, 
> in order for the GUI to accept
> the Bishop move. (An alternative would be too use the Shogi Dragon Horse in 
> stead of a Bishop
> in the initial setup, although this would err in the other direction, by 
> also accepting Wazir-like captures.)
> 
> Making a patch to add MiniChess support to Board 4.3.15 as standard variant 
> would therefore be quite
> trivial, limited to adding its name to the list of variants, making an 
> entry for it in the "New Variant..." menu,
> and supplying the initial position.
> 
> H.G.